


Wizarding Hell

by InsaneTrollLogic



Category: Lucifer (TV), Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, and of course Lucifer 'Identity Crisis' Morningstar wants a go at the sorting hat, hell loops, look there are a lot of wizards in hell, not an au, that much power leaves you with a lot of guilt, this was supposed to be funny but then it became a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 16:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18996199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneTrollLogic/pseuds/InsaneTrollLogic
Summary: The one where the Devil is a Hufflepuff.





	Wizarding Hell

**Author's Note:**

> It figures that the first Lucifer fic I write would be a crossover with a fandom I haven't played in for years.
> 
> Still, for all this is vaguely post-series for Merlin, I feel like you're good if you've got a vague sense of Arthurian Legend. It's mostly a Lucifer fic.

He gets a lot of wizards in hell. And their Hell loops are invariably filled with regrets. Lucifer can’t say he blames most of them for the guilt. Most of them have a rather terrific amount of power. Which means more chances to act and higher stakes if they fail. Couple that with an unusually long lifespan, most wizards die with an overabundance of guilt.

On the whole, Lucifer is rather fond of their loops. Merlin, in particular, is one of the more interesting chaps he’s ever met, one of the few who is well aware of where he is, but unwilling to _leave_. His loops are that of knights and fights, all in service of the great Kind Arthur. A good deal less boring that most people’s guilt, even if it does end the same way every time.

And these day’s he’s rather more interested in a different pert of Merlin.

Seems he left behind a rather fascinating hat.

An ingenious bit of magic, a way to look into a person’s psyche. To judge them, sort them. The hat looked at essential nature, categorizing child as young as eleven. He watches the loops, fascinated by the glimpses he sees of the hat.

The hat doesn’t deal in desire so much as _essence_ , but it’s close enough that Lucifer is absolutely interested to try.

* * *

It’s centuries before he finally gets a chance, sneaking into the warded monstrosity of a castle that calls itself _Hogwarts_. The doors take a bit of persuading. He’s usually better with locks, but wizards, in all their infinite wisdom had gone and made half of the things sentient. Attempting to seduce a painting has all of the tension of flirting with none of the release.

The headmaster’s office dotted with bizarre trinkets, most of which hold entirely too much power for humans to channel, but he bypasses them all in favor of a ratty black hat.

He eyes it distastefully. Wizards never had any fashion sense. But he supposes sacrifices must be made.

So he grabs the hat, shakes it once to dislodge some of the dust and jams it on his head.

There’s a long moment of silence.

He wonders if he’s broken the damned thing.

Then, a whisper in his ear, _You’re not a wizard, are you?_

Oh, so it’s not just the portraits. A sentient, all-seeing hat. He’s delighted despite himself. “Merlin’s been holding out on me.”

 _Curious thing aren’t you,_ the hat comments. _An angel._

“Devil,” Lucifer corrects.

 _Semantics,_ the hat counters. _But I suppose my function remains the same. I have been tasked with sorting students. Not just based on who they are, but where they belong. What they have the potential to become._

“And where, pray tell does the Devil belong.”

A long pause, followed by a decisive statement: _Hufflepuff_.

“Hufflepuff?” Lucifer echoes.

Before he can get clarification, the hat is torn from his head.

His brother stands in front of him, wings spread in all his insufferably angry glory, “Wizards, Luci? Really?”

He scrambles from his seated position. “Maybe I found some kind of kindship with them brother,” he snaps. “After all, we do get an absurdly disproportionate amount of them in Hell.”

“Bad enough you abandoned your post,” Amenadiel says. “But placing yourself with wizards? I can only imagine what evil you could tempt them into creating.”

“Afraid of a bunch of pretty sparkles, brother?” Lucifer taunts.

Amenadiel seizes him roughly by the collar. “I’m taking you back to Hell.”

Lucifer sighs. “Of course you are.”

* * *

He checks when he’s back. Out of curiosity more than anything.

Helga Hufflepuff is the only one of the Hogwarts founders who does not reside in Hell.

* * *

But that’s the most he thinks of it for eons. He even finds himself forgoing Merlin’s hell loop. After so many years, even a loop filled with knights and swordfights grows tiresome. The world up top is changing and it’s almost a full time job to keep up with the differences. The pace of technology, the scale of the tragedies.

The wizards are getting darker, too. Amenadiel was right to want to shield them from corruption even if Lucifer has no desire to do the corrupting. He finds himself investigating out of curiosity, wondering if there is something in the wizarding water.

There is a connection between many of the particularly monstrous wizards. At least the ones hailing from the UK.

They were all sorted into Slytherin.

He itches to go back to the surface and have another go at the hat. Their first conversation had been cut too short.

Instead, he decides to go to the source.

Merlin’s Hell loop is one of the longer ones, nearly five years. Lucifer’s not sure how it went in life, but in Hell, it’s nothing but a chain of betrayals and failures. Every friend he let die, every mistake that ends in disaster. Every murder committed in the name of protecting the future king who did not truly know him

It ends, as it always does, in Arthur’s death.

Lucifer arrives just after the moment, Merlin cradling the King in his arm.

“Bad time?” he asks.

The body evaporates in his arms, and the action leaving him desperate and gasping until he sights Lucifer.

His face clears. “What brings the king of Hell to my personal Hell?”

“Curiosity, mostly,” Lucifer says, flicking some dirt off his sleeve. “I had a run in with that hat of yours when I was topside a while back.”

Merlin’s face folds into a frown. “What on Earth does the hat have to do with anything?”

“It told me I belong in Hufflepuff.”

“Really?” Merlin blinks at him. “I mean, it’s not what I would have pictured for you, but I suppose it fits.”

“Ah, you would have suspected Slytherin? If for no other reason than the snake?”

“Salazar prized ambition in his students,” Merlin says slowly. “Cunning as well, but mostly ambition. What is yours?”

“To leave this vile place,” Lucifer says caustically.

“You have a kingdom. Power beyond even my own and your greatest ambition is to leave?” Merlin tilts his head. “Salazar was not one to squander power. I might have thought you suited for Gryffindor.”

“Home of the brave.”

“Well, you did pick a fight with God,” Merlin says. “The most powerful being in the universe. For a cause you believed in, even if others found it wrong.”

Lucifer scoffs.

“Incidentally,” Merlin continues, “it’s also why I don’t think Rowena would have you. They’re thinkers, Ravenclaws. More interested in knowledge than causes. I can’t see any of them picking a fight with the gods.”

“My father…”

“Is not the subject of our talk.”

Lucifer seethes. “And what of you and your little King?”

“Arthur was non-magical,” Merlin says, his face clouding. “But I always imagined him and Gordic would have gotten on. Brave as they came, Arthur Pendragon. As for me, well…”

“Out with it,” Lucifer prompts, pushing power into his words. “Let’s hear the truth.”

“Ambition was always my downfall. I had dreams of a great destiny. And I traded pieces of myself to make it happen. To scrape together more and more power. Never tried on the hat myself, but I suspect I am Slytherin to the core.”

“And what, pray tell, does Hufflepuff say of my character.”

“Helga’s preferences were harder to pin down,” Merlin admits with a frown. “She valued the truth. Fairness. Willingness to work hard when required. Loyalty.”

“Loyalty?” Lucifer spits. “When my very being has been defined through rebellion?”

“Loyalty isn’t always to people,” Merlin says. “Sometimes it’s to an ideal. It may even be to something you haven’t found yet. And even the most loyal may lose faith given sufficient cause.”

Lucifer falters. “I suppose she would have been thrilled to find the Prince of Lies among her pupils.”

“Prince of Lies is quite the title,” Merlin replies. “But the existence of the title is not conclusive evidence that you are a _liar_.”

Lucifer deflates.

“I think,” Merlin says after a second’s pause. “That all those deals I made for power. For ways to save Arthur. I would have gotten a far farer deal making them with you.”

“Take that _back_.”

Merlin huffs out a quiet laugh. The sound is so foreign that the entirety of Hell quakes with it. “Of course, _sire_.”

The laughter is gone as soon as he says the words. And Lucifer fears that the fleeting moment of lucidity was too much to ask of anyone in Hell, even history’s most powerful warlock.

“Tell me,” Lucifer says with enough power to cut through. “You know where you are. You know what you can do. Why do you stay here?”

He looks over his shoulder, years peeling off his face as the loop begins to call him back. “Because if I leave, I may never see Arthur again.”

* * *

“Have you met Harry Potter?” the detective’s spawn asks as she slurp at milk left in her bowl of cereal.

“No,” Lucifer says curtly. He’s hasn’t done much research into the Rowling woman’s work, but he suspects there is a good deal of fact muddled in with her fiction. “But I have met Merlin. Now there is an interesting chap.”

“Was he old?” Beatrice asks. “He has a beard in all the stories.”

“Younger than you might think,” Lucifer says. “Or at least he looks it.”

Beatrice drains the last of her milk, swiping once at the line of white it left on her upper lip. Then she hops off the stool so she can take her bowl to the sink. “I think Harry Potter’s cooler. He gets to go to a magic school!”

“We’ve been reading Harry Potter at bedtime,” Chloe says as she hands Beatrice her backpack. “We’re on book three and Trixie’s _obsessed_.”

Trixie shrugs on her backpack. “What house do you think you’d be, Lucifer?”

“Slytherin, right?” Chloe asks, giving him a light pat on the shoulder. “But a misunderstood one.”

“Hufflepuff, actually.” Lucifer adjusts his cufflinks as his words are met with stares. “For what it’s worth, I was surprised as you are.”

“Huh,” Chloe says. “Didn’t figure you one for taking the quiz.”

“Not so much taking a quiz as trying on a hat.” Lucifer shudders. “It was a ghastly thing. Didn’t at all go with my outfit. I surmise the two of you tried some other method of sorting?”

“No way,” Beatrice says. “Hogwarts is cool in stories, but lots of people try to _kill you_ at Hogwarts. And they don’t have the internet. It’s better here.”

Chloe ran a hand through her daughter’s hair. “I’m with her. Muggle all the way.”

A fond smile curve’s Lucifer’s lips. “Sensible to the end, Detective. Well said.”

“Hufflepuff, though,” she teases.  “Honest, hard-working and loyal. Doesn’t exactly scream _devil_.”

“Yes, well, we all have our hidden depths.”

She rolls her eyes at him and maneuvers Beatrice out the door and towards the bus stop.

His eyes soften as he follows her out the door.

He’s uncomfortably aware that he would follow her anywhere.


End file.
